FROM CRISIS TO CHAOS
U.S. lurches into state of civil unrest after weekend of demonstrations over death of George Floyd Curfews imposed in dozens of cities across U.S. as massive protests show no signs of slowing down
WASHINGTON— At the gates blockading Lafayette Square park near the White House Saturday, hundreds of protesters chanted as they faced a line of riotshield-equipped Secret Service and National Guard officers.
“I can’t breathe,” they shouted, echoing the dying words of George Floyd as the knee of a Minneapolis police officer on his neck took his life last week. The sentiment also summed up the suffocating sense that a nation in crisis was lurching toward chaos. In the midst of an ongoing pandemic that has claimed more than 100,000 American lives and seen people consigned to their homes for months, and during a parallel economic contraction that has sent unemployment rates to their highest levels since the Great Depression, protests and riots spread to dozens of cities across the country over the weekend — many accompanied by scenes of police brutality, landmarks on fire, and widespread looting.
Police and protesters alike mostly wore COVID-19 masks on the weekend, though the concept of social distancing seemed wholly abandoned in the crowds. On H Street at the north end of the park in Washington, some protesters had pulled a metal garbage bin up to near the fences that marked the police line, and set it ablaze: a dumpster fire. That too seemed a darkly humourous commentary on the state of the nation nearly halfway through 2020, but one underscored by a tense sense of danger as the acrid, choking scent of whatever was inside mingled in the air with the sting of pepper-spray liberally fired into the crowd periodically by police.
Those on the street, often chanting “No justice! No peace!” and “Hands up, don’t shoot!” pelted the police line with water bottles, traffic cones, flaming items from the dumpster, fireworks and occasionally bricks dug up from the sidewalk — often as other protesters chastized them and called for peace. “That’s what they want!” one protester said to a man hoisting a wooden traffic sign and preparing to throw it, before he returned it to the ground.
Some protesters shouted at police, “Why are you protecting Trump? He doesn’t care about you! He needs you to protect him but he wouldn’t protect you!”
Many focused their taunts at a Black officer in the line, “Would you protect my son? Do you think they would?” and “If you didn’t wear that uniform they would kneel on your neck!”
For hours, a push-and-pull took place in which protesters pulled down barricades and police restored them — seemingly poised on the verge of an open clash that never quite came, though some cars were burned, windows smashed, and stores looted in parts of downtown Washington and the adjacent, affluent Georgetown neighbourhood in the early morning hours of Sunday. Late Sunday night, several fires erupted in Lafayette Square.
In other cities across the country, the situation was even more violent and volatile: police drove a car into a crowd of protesters in New York City, officers fired paint canisters at residents sitting on their front porch in Minneapolis, in Philadelphia 13 police officers were injured and looting continued into Sunday, prompting the city to order businesses shut down.
Curfews had been imposed in more than three dozen cities as of Sunday morning, and the National Guard had been activated to try to restore order in 15 states and the District of Columbia. According to the New York Times, at least 75 cities had seen protests after the death of Floyd, and many of them were smouldering after the experience, an experience not seen on such a scale since 1968.
As people across the country were left to fear and debate fires and looting as protest tactics, many protesters decried what they called the co-opting of their peaceful movement by those with violent ends. A protest planned for Austin, Texas, Sunday was called off by organizers due to fears the event would be highjacked by white people committing violence in the name of Black Lives Matter. Others pointed out dozens of reports and videos of police instigating violence against protesters and members of the press, seemingly unprovoked.
Benjamin Crump, the lawyer for the family of George Floyd, whose death kicked off the protests, decried the violence on a CBS program Sunday, saying neither he nor the Floyd family agree with violence. But, he said, “Elected officials have to understand that it is not these protesters that started these fires across America. It is police brutality and a racist criminal justice system. And the only thing that can put out these fires are police accountability and equal justice.”
As politicians across the country appealed for peace, President Donald Trump seemed to send mixed messages over the weekend, at one point promising severe police tactics by tweeting “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” (he claimed later that he did not want shooting, but was saying protesters would shoot each other), and promising any protesters breaching the White House fence would be greeted by “vicious dogs” and “ominous guns.” On Saturday he suggested his own MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement might show up to meet protesters near the White House, though there was no sign of them Saturday night.
Many commentators suggest that Trump might see benefit politically from a protest movement becoming associated with mass unrest, and being seen to meet violence with violence. He has denied that he is encouraging violence, however, claiming for instance “MAGA loves black people,” and expressing his “horror” at police brutality. On Sunday he tweeted that he would designate “ANTIFA as a terrorist organization,” a promise that may be hard to keep as Antifa is not an organization in any conventional sense, but a loosely aligned set of self-described anti-fascist people who prefer direct confrontational tactics in protests.
The president spent part of Saturday watching the launch of the NASA/SpaceX mission to the International Space Station, the first crewed space flight launched in the U.S. in nine years. It was a strangely triumphant contrast to the unfolding chaos in the streets — and ongoing tragedy in hospitals and boardrooms — across the country. A bit of hopeful business as usual.
It’s becoming less clear, however, if or when anything like usual life will be restored in this country.
The protests and the accompanying civil unrest only grew over the weekend. The harsh scenes of severe police response at the protests would only seem to deepen the message of the protesters about brutality, and the ensuing protester response might only lead to more conflict.
There’s reason to fear the crowded protests themselves, and the conditions of arrests and detentions alongside them, would lead to a renewed outbreak of coronavirus.
Even as states across the country try to reopen for business, the expiration of some emergency government benefits and ongoing fear of the virus may mean the worst of the economic hardship lies ahead. Even if Trump were inclined to try to heal the nation with some kind of address, as some have called for him to do, it is hard to imagine anything he could say that would deescalate the situation rather than be read as a provocation by the protesters.
There is no obvious end point to the unfolding crisis. After months of the coronavirus and days of civil unrest, Americans are bracing themselves for more chaos in the days and weeks ahead.